She was a visiting PhD student at the Institute for Ethics, Environment, and Public Policy at Lancaster University and submitted her doctoral thesis to the University of Turku on Animal Individuality: Moral and Cultural Categorisations. Her book Eläinten moraalinen arvo (Vastapaino 2004) is considered the first commercially published Finnish monograph dedicated solely to animal ethics.[1] She is also the author of Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) and Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield Int. 2018) as well as around 35 peer-reviewed papers. Her edited volumes include "Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy" (co-edited with John Hadley, Rowman & Littlefield Int. 2014). Aaltola is an adjunct professor at the University of Turku and a senior research fellow at the University of Eastern Finland.[2]